The event that adventurers' dreams are made of—the Mog Bonanza—has made its glorious return!

Without a doubt, linkshells throughout Vana'diel will buzz as adventuring comrades discuss the extravagant prizes they've set their sights upon, the numbers they'll employ to usher in their fortunes, and how they'll flaunt their winnings.

*Bonanza marbles will be available for purchase from Tuesday, January 29, 2013, at 12:00 a.m. *Please remember that all prizes won in the Mog Bonanza are valueless virtual items for use in the game FINAL FANTASY XI only. Prizes cannot be transferred to another player in exchange for real-world money without violating the PlayOnline Member Agreement and risking termination of the accounts of all parties involved.

Is it just me or does the selection of rewards seem crappier this year? Pulse cells? Come on, that's blerg. Also where does some of this stuff actually come from? Like the Mass Chalemie?

1. Mythic or Dharp 2. Probably gil 3. probably gil, maybe Ker's Cuirass cause it looks nifty 4. meh. Maybe the Mass Chalemie, not because it is particularly special but cause I don't have it and I am a brd. 5. one of the battlefield items.

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lolgaxe wrote:

When it comes to sitting around not doing anything for long periods of time, only being active for short windows, and marginal changes and sidegrades I'd say FFXI players were the perfect choice for politicians.

Assuming it's your main character, the only choices for Rank 1 and Rank 2 are mythic and Cats Eye, respectively. Let's see, 450m-600m worth of alexandrite (granted you can't sell or transfer it) or 4.6m gil...

Is it just 4.6 mil? Really?

Either way, can anyone imagine someone being fool enough to use a rank 2 prize to get empy AF3+2?

I can't even...

I don't see how that is worthy of a rank 2 prize.

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lolgaxe wrote:

When it comes to sitting around not doing anything for long periods of time, only being active for short windows, and marginal changes and sidegrades I'd say FFXI players were the perfect choice for politicians.

Seriously like every update announcement has been of the form "The [newish content] comes [verb]ing in!" It's like they literally don't have any idea how else to announce something, and just keep editing the old line of text with slightly new words.

... yeah, alot of the prizes are pretty gimp. Why empy armor? It should be NNI floor 100 or neo salvage armor.. or legion or meebles boss drops... or the HQ abjurations like Khepri or Huginn. Empy armor is just silly.

HUGE lol at level 90 Empy weapons too... How is a free weapon equal to a 450 mil weapon?

Let's break this down, do you go out of your way to help EVERYONE that asks for help with 85 - 90 progression on some of the Empys? I.e The Khim paths, especially post Abyssea craze? Especially for people who can't brew it constantly or just started the game and working their way through all of this?

You'll be lying if you say yes. That's who pick the weapons in prizes because not everyone was or is lucky enough to get the supposed "free weapon".

Let's break this down, do you go out of your way to help EVERYONE that asks for help with 85 - 90 progression on some of the Empys? I.e The Khim paths, especially post Abyssea craze? Especially for people who can't brew it constantly or just started the game and working their way through all of this?

You'll be lying if you say yes. That's who pick the weapons in prizes because not everyone was or is lucky enough to get the supposed "free weapon".

Let's break this down, do you go out of your way to help EVERYONE that asks for help with 85 - 90 progression on some of the Empys? I.e The Khim paths, especially post Abyssea craze? Especially for people who can't brew it constantly or just started the game and working their way through all of this?

You'll be lying if you say yes. That's who pick the weapons in prizes because not everyone was or is lucky enough to get the supposed "free weapon".

Actually, no, they can't, as he already mentioned, players (like me) who haven't done the Abby grind to gear up can't solo farm 200k per brew, and don't see ever being able to do so. Abby to new players is largely closed, people these days don't have the patience while newcomers learn the arcane and highly convoluted mechanics Abby requires one to know off by heart.

Let's break this down, do you go out of your way to help EVERYONE that asks for help with 85 - 90 progression on some of the Empys? I.e The Khim paths, especially post Abyssea craze? Especially for people who can't brew it constantly or just started the game and working their way through all of this?

You'll be lying if you say yes. That's who pick the weapons in prizes because not everyone was or is lucky enough to get the supposed "free weapon".

Xilk is correct to an extent though, at least in regards to choosing a Mythic vs. an Empyrean. Once you've obtained the level 75 version of a Mythic weapon, you're pretty much past the biggest hurdle of getting it to level 99. The 30,000 alexandrite, the 100,000 ampoules needed for the Balrahn's Eyepatch, the 150,000 Nyzul tokens, the three ToAU beastmen kings, the four Salvage bosses, and a full clear of all Assaults lie there before you can even obtain the weapon. That's an extraordinarily large amount of time and gil to devote to one weapon, but once you have said weapon, the trials to obtain the level 99 version are arguably the easiest of the three "ultimate weapon" types.

On the other hand, look at Empyrean weapons. While it's dependent a bit on the jobs available to you and the one you're doing, making the level 80 version could take you a couple days to make if you wanted to, and the 85 version another day or so after. Granted, the 90 version can be a bit more arduous depending on the path, but even that can be taken care of in a couple days if you handle it casually. The lv. 80-90 NMs you need to kill for the items to upgrade drop +2 Empyrean armor items, and the lv. 85 and lv. 90 version mobs have NMs involved that drop +1 Empyrean seals, so there's plenty of incentive for others if you wanted to do shouts.

If you don't have the help to make an Empyrean weapon, then you're going to have an even harder time making a Mythic weapon, since there is far more time involved there with events that absolutely cannot be soloed, and then there's the incredibly high price tag due to the Alexandrite (420 million given conservative estimates on my server). Once they obtain that Mythic weapon though, the majority of their troubles are over. Yes, the ZNM tier IVs can take a bit to farm the pop sets for, and it will take you a few days to do the Salvage bosses, but the only difficult part left would be the Mulcibar's Scoria from Pandemonium Warden for the level 99 version. With the Empyrean weapons, getting to lv. 90 is the easy part. It'll take you either an extremely long amount of time farming up the plates yourself, or 150 million gil for plates alone. Then you have to include the Riftdross or Riftcinder for the 99 version, which is another 27-60 million (again, my server's numbers), and you can see that the big hurdle for a 99 Empyrean would still lie ahead for those that pick an Empyrean weapon from the Mog Bonanza.

Granted, Abyssea nowadays is starting to die down a bit, but I still see plenty of individuals in there all the time farming up seals and +2 items, and I'm certain that they'd be willing to help if someone was there doing the same mobs for Empyrean items. Cruor farming is a thing of the past, so brewing is a bit limited, but I personally don't believe that finding help for making them is.

Let's break this down, do you go out of your way to help EVERYONE that asks for help with 85 - 90 progression on some of the Empys? I.e The Khim paths, especially post Abyssea craze? Especially for people who can't brew it constantly or just started the game and working their way through all of this?

You'll be lying if you say yes. That's who pick the weapons in prizes because not everyone was or is lucky enough to get the supposed "free weapon".

Actually, no, they can't, as he already mentioned, players (like me) who haven't done the Abby grind to gear up can't solo farm 200k per brew, and don't see ever being able to do so. Abby to new players is largely closed, people these days don't have the patience while newcomers learn the arcane and highly convoluted mechanics Abby requires one to know off by heart.

His tone was valid.

Edited, Jan 28th 2013 9:51am by Kragorn

I still see shouts for abby exp parties, seal farming parties and wiki has it all out lined and easy to understand.

Let's break this down, do you go out of your way to help EVERYONE that asks for help with 85 - 90 progression on some of the Empys? I.e The Khim paths, especially post Abyssea craze? Especially for people who can't brew it constantly or just started the game and working their way through all of this?

You'll be lying if you say yes. That's who pick the weapons in prizes because not everyone was or is lucky enough to get the supposed "free weapon".

Actually, no, they can't, as he already mentioned, players (like me) who haven't done the Abby grind to gear up can't solo farm 200k per brew, and don't see ever being able to do so. Abby to new players is largely closed, people these days don't have the patience while newcomers learn the arcane and highly convoluted mechanics Abby requires one to know off by heart.

His tone was valid.

Regarding the arcane mechanics of Abyssea, they're not that hard. Just different It took everyone a month or two to figure it out the lights when it first came out, but once we did get it figured out, it turned out to not be that complex at all.

If you have a decent linkshell, getting geared up with Abyssea goodies shouldn't be difficult at all. My linkshell runs Abyssea seal parties and stuff all the time. I've personally brewed Shinryu to get some folks their final clear and Atma of the Apocalypse.

Aby is not closed to new players at all. You should take a closer look at the details. There are really good wiki pages and threads with abyssea details. There are also many experienced players who will answer questions. You could even grind vw in pugs instead of Abby Sea for cruor to brew with.

You can often get the best atma for free if you just ask the groups which are doing the ones you want. It only takes a small collection of good atma to solo a huge amount of abyssea.

Picking a lv90 emp (or any set of emp armor, for that matter) for your prize is a huge squandering of the odds you just defied to win it, there's pretty much no way around that. This can be easily determined by simply comparing experiences between people who've finished any sort of empyrean stuff (a whole **** of a lot of people) and people who've finished things like a relic or mythic (a whole lot less, particularly so for mythic). I can and have finished whole sets of +2 armor from scratch for people in the span of a single day on several occasions, no joke.

As much as it's perfectly within one's rights to choose that as their prize, it's also perfectly within my rights to laugh at them for it :s

1) VW is the new Cruor farming, and for an individual (i.e. as opposed to someone with a bunch of mules sitting in a FC party) it generates Cruor faster than Abyssea ever did. Start spamming stuff like Qilin, Jeuno T5/T6, Morta... you'll be rolling in cruor in no time, with lots of chances to get some great items and sellables (HMPs, Riftcinder) at the same time. Semi-regular VW is totally funding my remaining lv90 empys, which I can basically solo with minimal effort with me + mule getting pop sets and brewing a couple pops at a time.

2) Everyone should understand that the difficulty of obtaining the base weapon is clearly Mythic (hardest) - Relic - Empy (easiest). I'd personally certainly go for the Mythic, and anyone who cares about any job with a decent Mythic would probably be well served to do the same. But in some circumstances I can see why a person might not care to select a Mythic for a rank 1 prize. Maybe you only care to play jobs that have a relatively crappy Mythic - NIN THF RNG BRD COR etc.

Raelix wrote:

You could take the cash and pay people to get you a level 90 Empy and still have 80% of it left over.

Yeah, that's pretty hard to argue against. Especially for Relics, if you really wanted one you could take the gil prize and very quickly buy ALL of the currency to get a lv75 weapon, AND all/most of the Umbral Marrows to get it to 99. I'd be disgusted with someone who couldn't be bothered to do the fairly simply 75-95 Relic trials.

While an Empy would take a bit more time just to get through the NM phases and get all the pops/items you need, you could totally merc all of the lv80/85/90 items and have plenty of money left over to buy Heavy Metal Plates and Riftdross/cinders.

While an Empy would take a bit more time just to get through the NM phases and get all the pops/items you need, you could totally merc all of the lv80/85/90 items and have plenty of money left over to buy Heavy Metal Plates and Riftdross/cinders.

Eh, you'd maybe put a dent into HMPs.

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"And I'm prepared to passionately argue this point until nothing makes sense anymore. If that doesn't work, then the hours upon hours of whining will." -Red Mage Statscowski

While an Empy would take a bit more time just to get through the NM phases and get all the pops/items you need, you could totally merc all of the lv80/85/90 items and have plenty of money left over to buy Heavy Metal Plates and Riftdross/cinders.

Eh, you'd maybe put a dent into HMPs.

hmp's have been dropping in price on bahamut lately.

down to 80k/each quite regularly. thats 120 mil for the 90>95 upgrade. Thats cheaper than a relic atm.

I still see shouts for abby exp parties, seal farming parties and wiki has it all out lined and easy to understand.

Shouts, yes, but tell them you're new and don't understand the mechanics and forget it.

The Wiki contains a load of impenetrable information for those who weren't part of the gradual learning process, when little bits of strategy became apparent as people explored it, now it's a huge chunk of confusing 'proc this' 'coloured light that' which is impossible to absorb all at once, which is what the playerbase expects now they've all done it: typically, XI is hostile to new players because the vast majority have forgotten what it's like to be a noob.

You're not a newbie, you've forgotten what it was like to try to come to something as vast as Abby knowing nothing and have to deal with the expectations of those, like yourself, who know all about it.

I was absent for the most part from aby till scars, I came in once all the procs were well flushed out and the wiki was already put together. I was told to read the wiki and that is what I did. Yellow procing is very basic you land a spell from the proc list of the day of, the day before. and the following day while the mob is not casting or readying a tp move it doesn't more basic then that. If you can understand that fact there is not that much more to a seal party. The page explaining weakness triggering can't get any easier to understand.

Quote:

Yellow Weakness Yellow Weakness

Weakness Yellow - triggered by casting a specific magic spell on the NM. The spell's element coincides with the element of the current day, the previous day, or the next day of the Vana'diel week. The "current day" is determined when the monster was made active (by aggro, claiming, or popping). Greatly enhances drop rate for synthesis items. Drop rate for AF3 (Empyrean Armor) upgrade items is also increased, and additional "drop slots" for these items may be added depending on the NM and type of upgrade item. Has no effect on the drop rate for Empyrean Weapon upgrade items. It is necessary for the spell to accurately hit, regardless of its effectiveness, in order to potentially trigger a weakness. For instance, a resisted Dispel will not be able to trigger weakness. However, using Dispel for "no effect" against the enemy (due to the enemy not having any buffs to be dispelled) is treated as a successfully landed cast and may still trigger weakness. Inflicts Silence on the enemy for 30 seconds, with halved duration on each repeated use. The message displayed in the log will read:

"<Player>'s attack staggers the fiend! The fiend is unable to cast magic."

That is taken straight from wiki's weakness triggering it is also followed with a table that out lines every spell that is a proc. There is also one for red and blu procing. I don't know how much clearer it can be presented and if it is ingame or out of game you still have to read and this is by far better then someone typing into party chat trying to convey all this info that can be either printed out or open in another window.

As for winning: Im guessing the digits you can pick on those marbles are 0-99? And the objective is to get a match? Say I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 , 8 , 9 , 15, and two of the winning numbers are 2 and 15, then means I get a Rank 4 prize? Or am I mistaken? Trying to understand this event, thanks in advance

As for winning: Im guessing the digits you can pick on those marbles are 0-99? And the objective is to get a match? Say I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 , 8 , 9 , 15, and two of the winning numbers are 2 and 15, then means I get a Rank 4 prize? Or am I mistaken? Trying to understand this event, thanks in advance

Edited, Jan 29th 2013 8:59am by AlexFitz

You choose 5 Numbers in a specific order 0-9. Each rank has it's own winning number. (Rank 3 can be 534 while rank 1 might be 27401) You must match the numbers IN ORDER to get the prize. I believe in the case of the lower ranks it starts with the number on the right and goes left. But it's been awhile so I might be mistaken and it starts on the left.(Aka You get **** if you had 53467 but win rank 3 if you had 12534)

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If cookies were milk and milk was cookies. Would Oreo's still be america's favorite brand of milk?

As for winning: Im guessing the digits you can pick on those marbles are 0-99? And the objective is to get a match? Say I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 , 8 , 9 , 15, and two of the winning numbers are 2 and 15, then means I get a Rank 4 prize? Or am I mistaken? Trying to understand this event, thanks in advance

Edited, Jan 29th 2013 8:59am by AlexFitz

You choose 5 Numbers in a specific order 0-9. Each rank has it's own winning number. (Rank 3 can be 534 while rank 1 might be 27401) You must match the numbers IN ORDER to get the prize. I believe in the case of the lower ranks it starts with the number on the right and goes left. But it's been awhile so I might be mistaken and it starts on the left.(Aka You get sh*t if you had 53467 but win rank 3 if you had 12534)

I don't think that's entirely right, though I've never done it. This is taken from the linked page:

------------- The Mog Bonanza is a number-guessing game in which you pick a five-digit number of your choice, kupo. Playing is simple! Purchase a Mog Bonanza marble (*1) from a Bonanza Moogle at designated areas (*2), then have the vendor inscribe your desired five-digit number on it, kupo. (*3) If you can't decide on a number, we moogles will be more than happy to pick one for you. The winning numbers will be announced at a later date, so sit tight and leave the rest to Lady Luck, kupo!

The conditions for winning are as follows:

Rank 1 prize: all five digits matching. Rank 2 prize: the last four digits matching. Rank 3 prize: the last three digits matching. Rank 4 prize: the last two digits matching. Rank 5 prize: the last digit matching. Rank 6 prize: No digits matching.

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The way I read that is that after you've gotten your five digit number on the reveal day they release the winning 5 digit number.

Say it's 66543

If you had 12334 you would get 0 prizes for no matching digits. If you had 12333 you'd get rank 5 for the last digit matching. 12343 would give rank 4 etc etc with Rank 1 only going to the people who had "66543" as their exact number.

They choose different numbers for each stage. Rank 5 is just one digit, and if your last digit matches you win a rank 5 with that marble if you don't win a higher rank.

Your assumption is fine, and how everyone thought it would work the first time, but it works the way Laxedrane posted.

How do we know? This isn't the first Mog Bonanza, lol.

Hmm. I don't know why, I'm not a math pro or anything like that but I almost wish it worked the way I thought it did. But with them choosing 5 different numbers I guess it raises the odds of winning something nicer? For instance, if you think rank 1 and rank 2 are "nice" prizes you get two different numbers to try to match, or something?